RE: [council] To Names Council on WG-C Deadline

["Chicoine, Caroline" <chicoinc@PeperMartin.com>]

I agree with your proposal with respect to points 1 and 2.  I also agree
with eliminating time restrictions from deadlines IN THE FUTURE since I
suspect that many people participating in this process regardless of their
background (i.e., not only non-commercial organizations, small businesses
and individuals) have full day jobs that require their participation "after
the business day on their personal time."

I personally have no problem applying such a new rule to the current WGC
deadline.  However, I simply wish to note that this deadline has been known
by all WGC members well in advance for quite some time (i.e. this was not
the typical fire drill we saw with WGA) and in fact the deadline was
carefully chosen to extend until Jan. 10th in light of the holiday
interruptions.  Also, while such a new rule would be only a minor
"extension" of the deadline, I simply point out that WGC does not take
kindly to delays in the process. I received quite a bit of flack for
requesting an extension of the last WGC deadline since it fell right after
the NSI/DOC/ICANN Agreements were released (my reasoning being there was not
enough time to review the Agreements before the deadline in order to
determine whether they affected our position paper).  Therefore, for the
minor additional time it would provide, I simply question whether it is
worth the potential "bad press", especially given that the reason for the
request is not a new development.  Food for thought.

Caroline

-----Original Message-----
From: KathrynKL@aol.com [mailto:KathrynKL@aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2000 2:01 PM
To: council@dnso.org
Cc: ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org; Eric.Menge@sba.gov;
weinberg@mail.msen.com
Subject: [council] To Names Council on WG-C Deadline 


To the Names Council and ICANN Counsel:
Happy New Year -- I hope the Year 2000 with be a very good year for you and 
your families, and of course ICANN!

In reviewing materials to begin the new year, a few concerns about the DNSO 
website and upcoming deadlines arose.  I would like to raise the following 3

issues and ask that following changes be made:  

[1] Acronyms:  The DNSO website, even the main homepage, use acronyms that 
are not first defined.  These include GA, WG, and NC.  This makes the
website 
very difficult to read and interpret for anyone who is not already familiar 
with the structure and functioning of the DNSO.  I would like to request
that 
acronyms be replaced with the full text, and perhaps a hyperlink to a clear,

concise definition.

[2]  Chair and Alternate Chair to the General Assembly.  Roberto's name and 
Harald's name have been added, but their statements of acceptance have been 
dropped.  Now that they have been elected as Chair and Alternate, many
people 
will be looking them up for the first time.  Their statements are valuable, 
and I request that the statements be linked to their names from the DNSO.ORG

page.

[3]  Comment Deadlines.  For the submission of comments to WG-C, I see a 
fixed date and time for comments.  This time falls midday in the US East 
Coast day and early in the US West Coast day.  It means that the majority of

a business day is lost to those who want to submit at the deadline (as many 
do).  It also means that the evening is lost to noncommercial organizations,

small businesses and individuals, many of whom finalize and submit their 
comments after the business day on their personal time.

    I think we set a bad precedent by imposing a fixed time and deadline for

comments.  In the physical world, such deadlines make sense:  as regulatory 
agencies accept paper filings and have staffs that go home at 5:30pm.  The 
Names Council has no such physical office, and the comments are being filed 
electronically.  Further, deadlines exclude comments, and that is certainly 
not our goal.   

    In this area of commenting, I would like to hold WIPO up as a good 
precedent. WIPO asked that all comments to its domain name proceeding be 
submitted on a certain day -- no time, just a certain day.  This was a fair 
way to handle the issue:  it allowed each country to have its full day and 
night to complete comments.  If one country gets a few more hours in a day, 
there is no harm.  If one country does not get its full hours in a day, I 
believe there is.
    
    So, I formally request that the comments for the WG-C deadline on
January 
10 be changed to include a date only, and no time.   This change will make 
the process of comment submission easier for noncommercial groups, 
individuals, and small businesses.

Thank you,
Kathryn Kleiman
NCDNHC